Petr Slezák

"But in the meantime, I made this demonstration again, where I wrote on a piece of paper, I don't know, maybe a meter by fifty, 'Get atomic weapons out of our territory', because at that time Russia wanted to deploy - or had already started to deploy - atomic weapons in our country. I just internally disagreed with that, and somehow I didn't quite... And they used to do these little things to wipe the rooms. It was a 'T' shaped board and you put a rag on it and it was easier to mop. And I'd nail it to the board and I'd demonstrate it. Everybody got away with it. Then I put it away in the cleaning room, the [banner], because I went to 'špak', as they used to say, to keep watch. That was when you had a two-hour shift, so it was just there on the edge. So I took the machine gun and went to patrol. In the meantime, someone was active and had already ratted me out. So some major came and found it, but that was stupid, because somebody must have 'painted' it. Well it was so funny how they lured me down - I had sixty sharps on me, a machine gun, and they shouted, 'Come on down,' because I was reporting, or in charge of the road from Cheb, and I was supposed to report through the passes and through the binoculars who was coming. Well, the first UAZ went, the second UAZ, the third UAZ, a civilian car, in between the UAZ. I always reported to them, well, and then they lured me down. I didn't realize they were going to replace me or something. And there they arrested me solemnly. It was massive, they searched everything, and then I had some interrogations. They took me to Cheb, and there they put me in jail. And there was quite a fuss about it, but no wonder, at that time."

"After that I had trouble with the State Security because of the leaflets and maybe it was also because of various other things. So they were behind me about two or three times. The first time they were there, they came in the morning. They used to always do that at eight o'clock, coffee at half past eight and we'd go and get it. They came to Rudolph's Hut to the kitchen and they were all [bleep] up. They thought they were important, the doorman was broken at the waist, she couldn't straighten up for a week. Now they came in and they wanted to take me away. There was an old accountant in the office, I can't remember his name now, but he was from Bystřice. A seventy year old man who was over-servicing, and he had a blue coat. A real accountant's gray gentleman, and he came in, and as he was kind of that first republic, he came up to them and said, 'Gentlemen, are you going to cook these four hundred meals here? Or are you going to pay for them? Or what are we going to give these people?' I was cooked, I hadn't [finished]... Of course, he could have replaced me, they would have managed or something... And he says, 'So come when it's over, at twelve o'clock. I'll keep an eye on Mr. Slezak here for you.' And they looked and they really left. I don't know, they went into the office somewhere and waited for eleven o'clock for me to give the meals out, for them to cook, and then they took me away. But the gentleman was very brave, and somehow he said it like that. In the meantime, the kitchen girls bought me a cigarette in the canteen to take with me, gave me a glass of wine to be brave. That was nice, I like to remember that, there was a really good team there."